Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Stephen King

Just downloaded his latest, Full Dark, No Stars, over at Audible.com. I didn't finish his previous one, Under the Dome (I'll explain why in another post), but he's my favourite living writer -- used to be two with Robert B. Parker -- so I have to check this novella collection out.

While downloading it, I saw that Audible has almost every Stephen King novel up in unabridged format. Awesome! So I downloaded It, Tommyknockers, Misery and The Langoliers. You see, I have the unfortunate character flaw of rarely finishing a book that's more than 500 pages, but I can deal with an audiobook no matter how long. I know, weird.

Once back in the 80s and once in the 90s I tried reading It but lost interest about halfway through, and the miniseries was weak sauce. But check this out, the unabridged audio for It is -- are you ready? -- 44 hours! Hot damn, and I thought Jean Smith's bio on FDR was lengthy at 33 hours.

I'm stoked about Tommyknockers, too, because in my opinion it was the last novel in his prime. I've heard it's overwritten, and I know he was all coked up and drunk while writing it, but I have high hopes since the miniseries was one of his better adaptions.

Misery I never read but should be interesting, since it was one of the first novels he wrote in sobriety.

And I had to download The Langoliers. I read the novella a while back, but it's read by Willem Dafoe. Couldn't resist. A superb sci-fi/horror as interpreted by one of America's finest hours. Gotta save that one for last. Build up the anticipation. . . .